Part 3 of 3: The legacy of George W. Bush

WASHINGTON — In May 2003, President George W. Bush ’68 stepped onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. “Mission Accomplished,” read the sign displayed prominently above the flight deck, referring to the war in Iraq.

Five years and over 4,000 American lives later, the United States remains in Iraq. But Bush has left the White House.

Shawn Thew

George W. Bush ’68 waves to the class of 2001 during commencement May 21, 2001.

All in all, this display of success in the face of continued adversity is emblematic of the Bush presidency, one in which Yale Diplomat-in-Residence Charles Hill says well-intentioned actions were executed poorly.

Described by Steven Weisman ’68, a classmate of Bush and a former reporter for The New York Times, as deeply moralistic, almost to a fault, Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was a sincere one. He viewed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a threat to the security of the United States and as a destabilizing actor in an unstable region. So, Weisman comments, Bush felt compelled to challenge Hussein at all costs.

But by all accounts, Bush failed to anticipate the conditions on the ground in Iraq, and later disregarded calls to send in more troops to prevent sectarian violence; he was convinced the task could be accomplished with fewer troops.

Bush’s incomplete execution has plagued other areas of his presidency as well. He has indeed prevented several known terrorist plots against the United States. And he has demonstrated a willingness to tackle difficult issues, including reform of immigration and health care policies and Social Security. But, Bush has generally been unable to follow through — today, immigration and health care reform remain unresolved.

Though he has meant well and found some success, Strobe Talbott ’68 believes Bush has also made some mistakes that will have significant and long-lasting ramifications for the United States and the world.

Like Truman?

In his final weeks in office, Bush and those around him have tried to tie his presidency to that of President Harry S. Truman. As with Truman, they assert that Bush’s policies will be vindicated by history.

“President Truman had low ratings in his second term largely because of the Korean War, which was very unpopular and can be identified with the Iraq war in Bush’s term,” said Hill, who served as chief of staff of the State Department after serving as deputy assistant secretary of state for the Middle East under President Ronald Reagan. “Like Truman, in 15 to 20 years, Bush’s stance will be vindicated once the full effect of his policies can be measured.”

But, Hill acknowledged, that argument is not particularly compelling.

Indeed, when asked if the Bush-Truman comparison is valid, Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institute and the deputy secretary of state during the Clinton administration, said simply: “No, no, no, that is nonsense.”

“The fact that Truman was not very popular in his second term is not relevant when comparing his presidency to Bush’s,” Talbott said. “You have to examine the merits and lasting consequences.”

By that measure, Talbott explains, Bush is no Harry Truman.

“He saw the United States as having an opportunity in the post-World War II world as the master builder in a rule-based international system,” Talbott said of Truman. “Bush has done the opposite, particularly in his first term, dismantling the FDR-Truman-Eisenhower system [of international cooperation] by demonstrating disdain for treaties and negotiations.”

Contrasting Bush’s doctrine of preemption to the system espoused by Truman, Talbott said Bush alienated foreign governments with his strong belief in unilateralism and an extreme version of American exceptionalism — that the United States is different and better than the rest of the world and should be allowed to do as it pleases.

Talbott contends that as opposed to Bush, Truman possessed a fundamentally sound strategy for minimizing the threat of Soviet aggression.

“The biggest international threat during the Bush administration was 9/11 and terrorism,” Talbott said. “But unlike Truman, [Bush] did not come up with a sound strategy — he over militarized the response to the threat.”

But others are not convinced. Christopher Michel ’03, deputy speech writer and former assistant to the president, said he firmly believes that Bush’s actions were strategically sound in the long run, and that only with time will the administration’s policies will be seen as correct.

“I think the grand strategy of the administration has been right,” said Michel, a former editor in chief of the News. “The fundamental moment of this presidency came on 9/11 when President Bush was faced with the question of whether this was an isolated event or evidence of a different world. The president’s fundamental insight was that this is a global movement of extremism by a group of determined radicals. He understands the only way to combat it is to offer a better world for those who they recruit. It is for that reason that history will look back on Iraq and Afghanistan as positive actions.”

And, as classmate and friend Donald Etra ’68 adds, “President Bush stands in no worse position than Truman did when he left. He will ultimately go down in history as a great president.”

Indeed, supporters and critics alike believe Bush may deserve at least some recognition for his response to the attacks of Sept. 11.

“I remember thinking and everyone else was thinking [after Sept. 11] that there was just no way we would go seven years without another terrorist attack,” Michel said. “I think everybody can agree regardless of ideology that the President deserves credit for that.”

So agreed Lanny J. Davis ’68, an advisor to President Bill Clinton LAW ’73 and a critic of many of the Bush administration’s policies.

“To be fair, he deserves some credit that no such attack has occurred since Sept. 11, 2001,” he wrote in a column in The Washington Times on Jan. 12, 2009.

But Talbott criticizes Bush for merging the invasion of Iraq with the larger and more important War or Terror.

“He conflated the problem of the radical Islamist threat with the threat of Saddam Hussein in a way that did not make factual and strategic sense,” Talbott said.

Two terms, two presidents

One often overlooked aspect of the Bush presidency, Talbott notes, is the stark difference between the policies — particularly foreign policies — of his two terms. Indeed, Talbott said Bush worked in his second term to correct some of the ideology and policy mistakes of his first.

“In his second term, Bush made a conscious effort to work with allies,” Talbott said. And Hill and Michel cite the military “surge” in early 2007 as an example of Bush learning from his mistakes in Iraq.

“In late 2006, the anti-war movement was massive,” Hill said. “Congressional leaders were declaring the war was lost. Everyone thought that was it — that the United States was finally going to give up. But instead of reading the handwriting on the wall, Bush gave a major speech promoting a surge. He stood against all of the political wind and by the fall of 2007, it made important progress. It was act of important political courage.”

Michel said the toughest speech he worked on at the White House was in January 2007 when Bush introduced the troop surge in Iraq.

“It was something really unpopular and most people didn’t think it would work. To look back on it now, it is unmistakable that he saved Iraq and gave it a chance to succeed. I respect, and I think the president has made it clear that he respects, those who disagree with the invasion, but the success of the surge is indisputable.”

But according to critics of the former administration, one success may not necessarily excuse a slew of failures.

As Talbott commented, “Bush has left a lot of work for President Obama in restoring the country’s reputation abroad.”

For the future

Bush left office Tuesday with the lowest presidential approval rating since Gallup began recording approval levels 70 years ago. And in his farewell address to the nation on Jan. 15, he acknowledged mistakes.

Yet Bush remains adamant that history will vindicate his actions.

“Like all who have held this office before me, I have experienced setbacks,” he said in his Jan. 15 address. “There are things I would do differently if given the chance. Yet I’ve always acted with the best interest of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right. You may not agree with some of the tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.”

Coming out of the relative peace and economic prosperity of the ’90s, the beginning of the 21st century was a particularly trying time for the United States. Inaugurated in January 2001, Bush was the president faced with these unexpected challenges, and Michel, Etra and Weisman each said Bush showed he was willing to make the tough decisions, willing to tackle the unpopular and controversial issues.

But, Talbott notes, as recent events have shown — in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Pakistan and Somalia, in New Orleans and on Wall Street — Bush has failed to solve many of America’s and the world’s key problems. He says Bush was unable to deal with them in a comprehensive way.

During his farewell address, Bush read a quotation from President Thomas Jefferson: “‘I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past,’” America’s third president once said.

Indeed, for Bush, the future provides hope for vindication of a past riddled with missteps and controversy.

Comments

Robert '69

Miller has stated several times in this three-part diatribe ("triatribe?") of his that Pres. Bush's efforts in Iraq were a failure.
Those of us who read the papers and see the reports coming back from Iraq know otherwise: Saddam Hussein and his murderous sons are gone, democracy has at least a foothold there, and, thanks in the main to the "Surge" which the nattering class universally agreed would fail, safety and security has to a large degree returned to the streets.
Al Qaeda in Iraq is on the run everywhere, and the two rival factions of Islam there have resigned themselves to accommodation and negotiation, rather than shootouts in the streets.
Does this sound like failure to you?

Failure is throwing cruise missiles at aspirin factories when Americans around the world were under attack: when was the last successful attack on American civilians?
Hint: it was while Miller was still in short pants.

Anonymous

This whole series has just been very peculiar. Is this a three part op-ed?

Alum'81

A little clarification is in order. The "Mission Accomplished" sign was put up at the request of the Navy crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln because this was the return of their battle group after they had accomplished their 10 month mission in Iraq. It was not referring to the War in Iraq. When the War became more difficult because of the insurgency, Congressional Democrats and the media used the phrase pejoratively to suggest that President Bush was implying that the War had been won. The initial major combat operations were over, but the insurgency from Saddam loyalists, as well as foreign fighters and Al-Qaeda, would drag on for years. Anticipating initial troop levels is always difficult and is based on available intelligence and the need to balance having enough forces with having too many. Having too many forces strains supply lines, complicates communications and pulls forces away from other potential hot spots around the world. It is easy to look back and say there were not enough troops going in at the onset of the war, but hindsight is always 20/20. It is hard to fault Bush for anticipating this when he is relying on the CIA and Military for the intelligence and planning for the War. Of course, as Commander-in-chief, he is ultimately responsible and he has never blamed others for the miscalculations. As mentioned in the article, he pushed for more troops even though it was politically unpopular. He had faith in our troops when others did not.
I would disagree with Talbott about Bush's unilateralism. We went to war in Iraq (more accurately, continued the war) after 10 years of no-fly zones, sanctions, multiple UN Resolutions and foiled inspections. The Use of Force Resolution was approved by Congress with overwhelming majorities. The coalition of countries helping us is greater than that of the first Gulf War and greater than any coalition since the end of WWII. The Bush Administration has been multilateral in dealing with Iran and North Korea. The only major unilateral action was to fund HIV and Malaria treatment in Africa to an extent greater than any other President or country in human history.

jeffg

IT WASN'T AN OP-ED IT WAS A HE SAID SHE SAID TERM PAPER. AUTHER SHOULD HAVE
TAKEN A STANCE EITHER WAY, BUT HE CHOOSE TO QUOTE OTHERS. ALUM 81 YOUR CORRECT IT'S DIFFICULT TO FORCAST INITIAL TROOP LEVELS, BUT AFTER SOME TIME YOU SHOULD AT LEAST HAVE A CLUE ON WHAT IS NEEDED.

Anonymous

this article makes no sense. and, it's worth saying that the article is wrong: 4,000 American lives have not been lost since the Mission Accomplished incident; rather, that's the total number since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

crashdavis

How anyone can say with a straight face that Bush will be vindicated is fooling themselves. If anything, as time goes by, we will see the ramifications of one bad judgement after another and how they have affected US relations with the world. President Obama is going to have his hands filled fising what Bush and his cronies messed up. And I am wondering where Alum '81 heard that the Mission Accomplished banner was put up at the request of the Lincoln's crew? Either way the words came out of his mouth. I am just thankful that he is gone along with Cheney and the rest.

I saved this Bush-Yale picture, and whenever anyone tells me Yale is the finest school in the world, I simply point to this picture. It's surprisingly effective at shushing them.

party!

we taught bush how to party.

harvard taught him how to ruin the economy.

yeah harvard MBAs

T.R

The 2000 election put GWB's presidency behind the 8-ball. A democratic party who even when voting for his policies told us they had been lied to (i.e. they never read the bills). With along with the media supporters tracked every quirk and miss-step they still can't understand how he won re-election. Historians have become soothsayers and TV Psychiatrist. OHB will not have such baggage his stumbles are explained by reporters, followed by a quick analyst by Bob Beckell. I am wondering if MSNBC needs to be registered as a lobbying firm or at least as a Washington DC PR Firm. GWB's legacy cannot be written by the current gang of "journalists," Professors/Historians because they have shown they cannot separate themselves from their bias and viewpoints. Another thought: Should a Reporters ID-Graphic now include their Political Party?

Chris Matthews
D-MSNBC Washington

crashdavis

Umm…Bush won both elections by stealing them. Was it a coincidence that the state that lead to his election was the state that his brother was governor or that the woman in charge of re-counting the votes was the head of the committee to get Bush elected? Sounds fishy to me. And why in 2004 was Ohio in question up to the very end.
It hurts a lot of die-hard republicans that their president will be remembered for getting us into a war under false pretenses, curtailing our freedoms as citizens of the U.S., and getting us into an economic crisis that does not seem to be getting better.

John Crippen

The Legacy of George W Bush: (A Collection of Conflicting Opinions)

Can a man's legacy be drawn from an eight year period in time? What kind of a footprint has GWB left on the American people, or the world for that matter? Has he served his country well by protecting us from terrorism, or has a alienated America from the rest of the world. Has he acted as a Christian in his role as President of the United States, or has he misused the Bible as a means of procuring votes and evoking war? Was the rebuilding of Iraq set in motion years before the Twin Towers tragedy, or was this a rapid decision based on an emergent circumstance? I have tried to keep this debate as original as possible. That includes errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling. I have also tried to collect them in a somewhat chronological method in order to keep a level playing field. I have simply collected publicly posted comments of others from open sources.